ABSTRACT

It is widely argued that the practice of punishment is changing profoundly in western countries. Against a background of increasing public cynicism, fear of crime, heightened insecurity and a loss of faith in legal and political institutions, it seems that over the last two decades traditional penal values are increasingly being replaced by new ones (e.g. Franko Aaas 2005; Garland 2001). This new penal world may well cause us concern. As voters demand better value for money from the criminal justice system, there appears to be less concern with the rights of the individual and more concern with ‘system efficiency’. So, increasingly, you can expect to be punished not for any offence you may or may not have actually committed, but for what predictive risk-assessment technologies calculate you may probably do. As public trust in the wisdom of judges and other professionals further declines, it seems that sentences will increasingly be decided not on the basis of an assessment of you as a person but in accordance with ‘actuarial justice’ using predetermined scoring systems (rather like how insurance company actuaries calculate probable risks to determine premiums). Sentencing in Scotland is said to be illustrative of these major global shifts. Is it?